Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A new paper claims more shared development goals and less emphasis on wealth creation is the key to solving climate change.
Economic Equality Is Key to Solving Climate Change, Report Shows
By Jeremy Hodges
6 March 2018, 02:00 GMT+10
Economies need to reduce inequality and promote sustainable development for the world to avert the perils of runaway global warming, according to new research.
The risk of missing emissions targets increased dramatically under economic scenarios that emphasizes high inequality and growth powered by fossil fuels, according to research published Monday by a team of scientists in the peer-reviewed Nature Climate Change journal.
“Climate change is far from the only issue we as a society are concerned about” said Joeri Rogelj, the paper’s lead author and a research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis outside of Vienna. “We have to understand how these many goals can be achieved simultaneously. With this study, we show the enormous value of pursuing sustainable development for ambitious climate goals in line with the Paris Agreement,” he said.
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The abstract of the paper;
The shared socioeconomic pathways and their energy, land use, and greenhouse gas emissions implications: An overview
This paper presents the overview of the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) and their energy, land use, and emissions implications. The SSPs are part of a new scenario framework, established by the climate change research community in order to facilitate the integrated analysis of future climate impacts, vulnerabilities, adaptation, and mitigation. The pathways were developed over the last years as a joint community effort and describe plausible major global developments that together would lead in the future to different challenges for mitigation and adaptation to climate change. The SSPs are based on five narratives describing alternative socio-economic developments, including sustainable development, regional rivalry, inequality, fossil-fueled development, and a middle-of-the-road development. The long-term demographic and economic projections of the SSPs depict a wide uncertainty range consistent with the scenario literature. A multi-model approach was used for the elaboration of the energy, land-use and the emissions trajectories of SSP-based scenarios. The baseline scenarios lead to global energy consumption of 500-1100 EJ in 2100, and feature vastly different land-use dynamics, ranging from a possible reduction in cropland area up to a massive expansion by more than 700 million hectares by 2100. The associated annual CO2 emissions of the baseline scenarios range from about 25 GtCO2 to more than 120 GtCO2 per year by 2100. With respect to mitigation, we find that associated costs strongly depend on three factors: 1) the policy assumptions, 2) the socio-economic narrative, and 3) the stringency of the target. The carbon price for reaching the target of 2.6 W/m2 differs in our analysis thus by about a factor of three across the SSP scenarios. Moreover, many models could not reach this target from the SSPs with high mitigation challenges. While the SSPs were designed to represent different mitigation and adaptation challenges, the resulting narratives and quantifications span a wide range of different futures broadly representative of the current literature. This allows their subsequent use and development in new assessments and research projects. Critical next steps for the community scenario process will, among others, involve regional and sectorial extensions, further elaboration of the adaptation and impacts dimension, as well as employing the SSP scenarios with the new generation of earth system models as part of the 6th climate model intercomparison project (CMIP6).
Read more: http://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/13280/
The paper is a little coy about what they mean by “shared socioeconomic pathways”, but the following description of their favoured scenario caught my eye;
… SSP1 Sustainability – Taking the Green Road (Low challenges to mitigation and adaptation)
The world shifts gradually, but pervasively, toward a more sustainable path, emphasizing more inclusive development that respects perceived environmental boundaries. Management of the global commons slowly improves, educational and health investments accelerate the demographic transition, and the emphasis on economic growth shifts toward a broader emphasis on human well-being. Driven by an increasing commitment to achieving development goals, inequality is reduced both across and within countries. Consumption is oriented toward low material growth and lower resource and energy intensity. …
Read more: Same link as above
The paper has a point – there is no doubt if the world killed off prosperity and rapid economic growth, CO2 emissions would stop rising. If we all lived like people do in places like Cuba and Venezuela, places which have de-emphasised material concerns like financial security and having enough to eat, our global carbon footprint would be substantially reduced.
Some of these scientists just do not live in the real world. They live in a cosseted. protected world, believing that we should believe all they say, no matter how stupid their prognostications. Who pays them to promote such utter drivel, and don’t their paymasters ever read their ridiculous papers?
Isn’t this “better living through worse living?”
Ah! The cat is finally out of the bag!
Global Warming is a communist plot. A desperate attempt to save victory from the jaws of defeat.
I’ve know that since the 1990’s when I was the lead designer for a $28.2 million flood control project on the Grays Harbor estuary in Washington State. (I whittled the project down to $11.2 million – $28.2 was the Congressionally authorized cost.)
Here is a link to my recent Quora post that echos Mr Worrall’s story in a very compressed form. —> https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-pro-and-anti-arguments-in-favor-of-global-warming/answer/Jeff-Juel?share=afcaffd6&srid=uCM1X
Didn’t bother with your link. Could you have summarised it? What’s you point in this general and distilled discussion. Are you saying you were a public service employee who saved public money? I am seriously dubious since that’s like a species that initiates it’s own extinction.
Global Warming ( I am so glad you used that term) is the greatest most ingenious Trojan Horse ever devised. Not a communist plot because there are no communists left who are prepared to declare what they are. If you are so integral and dismissive of our concerns can I suggest you do a few years homework on the behaviour of the people and their work devoted to this fake emergency. You’re here so that’s half the battle. Simply put, no real science anywhere backs this BS. Ok. End of.
Weird, the full moon was several days ago.
Stopping global warming has just been an excused for the pursuit of their real goal, that of halting economic growth.
North Korea for all
At least the dogs will eat well.
Until they are eaten themselves . . . .
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In the past 15 years or so, there have been several episodes of panic-stricken “pandemic” stories in the media.
Bird flu epidemic 2005: was it a) swine flu or b) bird flu, a new variety or c) a recombinant new variant that occurred in the wild or d) an old strain? I’ll take d) for $500, Alex. It was the Spanish flu, discovered thanks to CDC’s using preserved tissues left from WWI patients who died from it.
Then we had the Nile fever scare; many crows died of it.
Then we had the ebola scare, but people survived it because they were treated for it, and it has run its course in its original location. It’s a virus that bats are immune to.
Then we had the zika virus scare, but the zika virus has been found to have a useful property: it destroys growing cancer cells.
None of them panicked people enough to shut down civilization and make the lot of use return to living in grass huts. We the People just went on about our business.
So those who want to Control the World cast about themselves, seeking something they could use to scare people silly, and came upon Global Warming, added words they probably can’t pronounce without stuttering, and now we have this protracted and openly political effort to Control the World through Global Warming propaganda.
This proposal to shut down civilization by destroying working economies should and does set off alarm bells, yes. But the very things these people depend on to spread the message will be unavailable to them to continue their efforts, because all those products that they use are the result of innovative thinking and a very complex, interwoven industrial society. Without it, they have nothing.
We have to be aware of what they say and try to do. That is as plain as sunrise on a clear day. If we turn away from it because it’s so obviously wrong and do nothing to dispute it, with accompanying backup, the people who are less informed will fall for that well-rhearsed nonsense like bowling pins. We must be as persistent as they are, or even more persistent, in providing accurate information that not only shows that they are wrong, but WHY they are wrong. If we don’t, then we lose.
And there in a nutshell is the entire philosophy of the Left.
I’ve got what I want, the rest of you can get stuffed.
It would be more accurate to say that the philosophy of the left is
You’ve got what I want, give it to me.
Old English folk song (to the tune of ‘Tannenbaum’:
“The working class can kiss my ass
I’ve got the foreman’s job at last”.
Not so incidentally, the British Labour Party’s song, “The Red Flag” , is ALSO sung to ‘Tannenbaum’.
Life expectancy back to 35-40. Mother the wife back into the kitchen, powering the washboard. Unbearable pollution caused by horse manure. And of course luxury for a very few of the correct green credentials.
“The paper has a point – there is no doubt if the world killed off prosperity and rapid economic growth, CO2 emissions would stop rising. If we all lived like people do in places like Cuba and Venezuela, places which have de-emphasised material concerns like financial security and having enough to eat, our global carbon footprint would be substantially reduced.”
Well not really true. If we would be to ‘go back’ 100 years we would still have enough problems with horse manure, with killing all the whales to earn a bit of whale oil and burning all forests to heat up. That will not last long, but would make greenies happy?
Whatever, the …… do not mention that a lot of ‘renewable’ that is used as energy power is cow dung that is still burnt in many countries to cook.
Should we go back to slash and burn agriculture? hunter gatherer societies?
“The main countries in which slash-and-burn agriculture is commonly used include: Bolivia, Singapore, Malaysia, Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Cameroon ”
What is necessary is a critical analysis of all these kind of papers from the 1980s 90s projections for 201x-202x and their failed models and alarmist posts. Plus identifying of all those funds sent in Nirvana to mitigate increasing CO2 that is feeding plants.
yes. Starting with Paul Ehrlich a thorough deconstruction of the alarmist claptrap infecting the intelligentsia and academic elites is long over due.
Lars P.
“Should we go back to slash and burn agriculture? hunter gatherer societies?
“The main countries in which slash-and-burn agriculture is commonly used include: Bolivia, Singapore, Malaysia, Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Cameroon ””
I am not sure what date this quote is from.
I suspect it is a few years ago; Singapore – even when I lived there, over twenty years ago – didn’t use slash-and-burn.
Hydroponics – probably.
Nowadays they’re making their own land – compare maps of Singapore form, say, the 1970s, with those of the last few years!
I make no comment on the other countries quoted, as I don’t know them at all well – if at all!
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Sorry – I can’t proof-read even a short comment of my own.
My bad.
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Ohmpf, sorry about that, forgot the link. It is from one warmist and alarmist page here:
https://www.theodysseyonline.com/slash-burn-agriculture-bad-rainforest-global-warming
Suppose they meant Indonesia not Singapore, you are perfectly right on that point, but this is how it is in that article. I must confess I have not used my brains reading it…
You’re a bit off there, LarsP. on the whale oil thing. That hasn’t been in used since the early to mid-1800s when petroleum was discovered in Pennsylvania shale and pumped out of the ground, distilled (cracked) into kerosene oil for lamps in the houses of the eastern USA.
You’re exaggerating things in your statements, and the whale oil reference is only one of them.
Well, the whale oil point is just a reminder of what really saved the whales.
I am unhappy to see how trees are being cut to be burned as pellets for some ideology.
The slash and burn agriculture happens nowadays mostly for palm oil production which is again one of the greenie induced idiocy.
Greens postulate their theories and push these without thinking at the harm they do, the unintended consequences, without accepting different points of view or critics. One of the most blatant examples with the greens is the case of DDT. Just search the malaria cases trend before and after the ban on DDT.
Not sure what other “exaggerating things” do you find in my statement?
Attention: Warfare Super Computers confirm Area 2266 has suffered a devastating attack. All area inhabitants must report to the disintegration chambers immediately. Failure to report will result in a breech of the UN Plan of Action on Global Population Control and Climate Change Mitigation.
The United Nations, Implementation of Sustainability for a Better World…….
So, their basic premise is communism will save the world. Really? Perhaps they should tour the ecological disasters that are the former USSR, Warsaw Pact and then toddle on into China and drink several glasses of untreated ground water. What a bunch of pinheads.
That’s the real purpose of this business
Didn’t Joe Stalin and Mao already try this?
They “controlled” the emissions of millions of innocent people…..permanently.
AARGH63,
“Didn’t Joe Stalin and Mao already try this?”
Sure, and it worked out great for them . . Held on to “absolute” power till they died.
The notion that we are up against fervent ideologues is just plain silly to me . . we’re up against people who want power over us, I am convinced, who merely use “ideologies” for PR purposes. As in; whatever talk-talk worked well to help get control over large numbers of people before.
You might call it a scientific approach to organized crime . . if you happen to have scruples about such niceties as the rule of law (and not strong-men) . . Criminals don’t, so it does nothing to deter what to me are simply large criminal gangs, to be pointing out that at times they use BS they lifted from things like communist regimes/ideologues and so on. If they thought BS lifted from Attila the Hun would work, they’d be feeding us his talk-talk.
I would assume he got paid with grant money for writing this paper, did he give his money to all his neighbors or did he go buy a new Prius? I’d like to know.
‘Economies need to reduce inequality and promote sustainable development for the world to avert the perils of runaway global warming, according to new research.’
Destruction of Western Civilization is the goal. ‘Runaway global warming’ is a meme to get us to accept our destruction. It has been surprisingly effective.
The unmasked face of climate extremism is truly ugly. This latest reveals the lie at the heart of the so-called “climate consensus”.
If the earth was actually facing dangerous “climate change”, the last thing we would to do is to have fewer resources and less wealth to deal with the problem.
At its heart climate extremists are misanthropic self declared elites, prescribing cruel suffering and destruction on humanity…excluding themselves of course.
Re: ZAZOVE please give a source for the wealth inequality chart. Thanks
I believe this has been the unspoken attitude of our rulers for 30 years. Which explains the otherwise inexplicable no growth economic policies they’ve adopted.
I wonder if any of these oh so smart academics realise, that if they take us peasants back to the lifestyle of Aussies at federation, 1901, that there will only be a need for the same number of academics we had then. That would be a reduction of about that magic number 97%.
Never was there a more vaguely understood concept than “equality,” when applied to humans,who are excessively unequal in every conceivable way. I guess there will be need for massive plastic surgery if we are all going to be equal. What does a person who is equal to you look like or behave?
Sardines in a can are all equal – and authors see us that way.
Haven’t you heard, everyone is equal but some are more equal than others.
Read “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut, where everybody is equal every which way – or else!
Obviously the authors of the paper never read the “Tragedy of the Commons.” If they even know about it they probably believe that its is just another archaic historical document with no relevance in the modern world, like the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence.
One young socialist tried to convince me that the Tragedy of the Commons was that greedy capitalists got rid of them.
Of course they want to eliminate growth as it is the primary impediment to the zero sum economic model the left so desperately needs to justify their positions.
HAS IT EVER BEEN ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE?
January2015 Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism. “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,” she said.
Dr. Ottmar Endenhofer IPCC co-chair of Working Group 3, Dr. Ottmar Endenhofer, November 13, 2010 interview [H/t Dr. Charles Battig]”…we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy…One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore…”
Peter Menzies in the Calgary Herald, Christine Stewart, former Canadian Environment Minister for the Liberal Party of Canada, said in 1998 that: “No matter if the science is all phony, there are collateral environmental benefits…. Climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
Read the paper (Open Access) if you can understand it. Looks like it may be for replacing ‘Now I lay me down to sleep.’
“Finally, both the narratives and the associated projections of socio-economic drivers were elaborated using a range of integrated assessment models in order to derive quantitative projections of energy, land use, and emissions associated with the SSPs.”….“The resulting storylines, however, are broader than these dimensions alone –”
46 authors from 16 organizations, 3 in US including this one–National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), 1850 Table Mesa Drive, Boulder, CO, United States. My sample size is small, but I have never read one from this journal (Global Environmental Change) that made sense.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378016300681?via%3Dihub